Sep 12, 2018

U.N.: Assad regime guilty of more chemical weapons attacks this year

These incidents bring to 39 the total known Syrian chemical attacks, a UN official said.
By REUTERS
GENEVA - Syrian government forces fired chlorine, a banned chemical
weapon, on a rebel-held Damascus suburb and on Idlib province this year,
in attacks that constitute war crimes, United Nations human rights
investigators said on Wednesday.

The three incidents bring to 39 the number of chemical attacks which the
Commission of Inquiry on Syria has documented since 2013, including 33
attributed to the government, a UN official told Reuters. The
perpetrators of the remaining six have not been sufficiently identified.

Weaponizing chlorine is prohibited under the Chemical Weapons
Convention, ratified by Syria, and under customary international
humanitarian law, the investigators said in their latest report.

"To recapture eastern Ghouta in April, government forces launched
numerous indiscriminate attacks in densely populated civilian areas,
which included the use of chemical weapons," it said, referring to
incidents on Jan. 22 and Feb. 1 in a residential area of Douma, eastern
Ghouta, outside the capital.

Women and children were injured in the attacks, suffering respiratory distress and requiring oxygen, it added.

"INDISCRIMINATE ATTACKS"

"The Commission concludes that, on these two occasions, government
forces and or affiliated militias committed the war crimes of using
prohibited weapons and launching indiscriminate attacks in
civilian-populated areas in eastern Ghouta," it said.

A surface-to-surface, improvised rocket-assisted munition had been used
in the two Douma incidents, it said. "Specifically the munitions
documented were built around industrially-produced Iranian artillery
rockets known to have been supplied to forces commanded by the (Syrian)
government," the report added.

In the northwest province of Idlib - where the United Nations fears a
major imminent assault by Syrian and Russian forces against the last
rebel-held stronghold - chlorine was also used on February 4, the UN
report said.

"Government helicopters dropped at least two barrels carrying chlorine
payloads in the Taleel area of Saraqeb," it said, adding that at least
11 men were injured.

"Documentary and material evidence analyzed by the Commission confirmed
the presence of helicopters in the area and the use of two yellow gas
cylinders".

The report, based on 400 interviews, also examined aerial and ground
attacks by Turkey's 'Operation Olive Branch', conducted with allied
Syrian rebels, which wrestled the northwest Afrin region from Syrian
Kurdish forces this spring.

Afrin's main hospital, a market and homes were hit, it said.

"In conducting airstrikes beginning on 20 January, the Turkish air force
may have failed to take all feasible precautions prior to launching
certain attacks, in violation of international humanitarian law," the
report said.

Rebels of the Free Syrian Army were "notorious for their arbitrary arrests and detention" in Afrin, it added.

More than a million civilians were displaced in six major battles across
Syria during the first six months of the year, many marked by war
crimes, the report said.

Thousands of displaced civilians still live in dire conditions in
severely overcrowded centres, "where many are still being unlawfully
interned by Government forces", it said.https://www.geezgo.com/sps/38906